Sustainable Chatbots supporting Learning

This paper proposes iMOOC (an innovative approach to adaptive learning) and iCHAT (a novel approach to the use of chatbots (and conversational interfaces) in education. iCHAT is an original technology to develop sustainable, relatively inexpensive and easy to maintain chatbots. In our vision, a chatbot (rather than being an answering machine) may support the learning process, by implementing adaptive learning, via conversational empathic interfaces. The advantage for the learner is adaptive learning made easy. The advantages for authors (and publishers) are: (i) a new way to make existing content attractive; (ii) an additional means to expand learning possibilities; (iii) the possibility to collect “non-functional” feedback from the learners. The approach is being tested on top of two technical MOOCs.